I live in DET and have seen about 75% of his starts these past two years. Completely different pitcher this past month than the year and month prior. He is usually good for 7 innings. He hasn't made it out of the 5th in a month.

Tiger announcer Jim Price (former Tigers catcher) who is normally a huge Robertson fan, says the ball just isn't "coming out of his hand right" (whatever that means) and he has no idea where its going. He's throwing BP.

He's on DL with dead arm, but insists he doesn't have any physical probelms.

This stint on the DL is awfully fishy right now. "Arm Fatigue" sounds dangerously like "Won't be getting his job back" when you start looking at the pitchers we could put in his spot.

Andrew Miller coming up. Kenny Rogers coming back.

Bonderman, Verlander, Maroth, and Durbin have all performed very well this season, so you know none of them are going anywhere. Barring a trade, I'd say Robertsons days as a starter expired this week. If Miller has a couple of good starts in the next few weeks, Nate could be pushed back to our seventh starter in line (with Zach Miner threatening to push him back to eighth), not even sniffing the rotation again for quite a while.

How timely -- this just out in the Free Press ... noting that he won't pick up a ball and throw for at least 5 days.

"Robertson acknowledged Thursday that while he's not hurting, he's also not throwing as well as usual. "It's confusing," Robertson said. "In the first month of the season, it seemed to be coming pretty easy. Then all of a sudden it was a battle and a grind every time I went out there. You just don't lose the ability to pitch like that. Whether my stuff is flattening out, or it doesn't have the late break or sharpness to it -- (I want) to get that back in the next few weeks and be the pitcher that I am and win big games."

I have a little different take on the rotation ... I think they'll end up trading Maroth (who did not top 90 mph last night) as rumored or moving him to long relief. He used to succeed with his very marginal stuff by avoiding HRs. He hasn't been able to do that since his surgery last year.

My guess is that Robertson comes back and is a 4.25-4.50 innnings eater from July on. He goes from being their third when the yaer opened to their fifth. The rest looks like Bonderman, Verlander, Rogers, Miller. They've got Durbin and Miner as fill-ins. Not bad.

The Tigers big issue will be the 7th and 9th innings. Zumaya is gone and Jones has been doing it with smoke and mirrors. I just hope Leyland's irraional love of veteran players (see Sean Casey) doesn't allow too long of a leash for Jones.

Everybody has bad days, but I honestly don't think I've seen anyone pitch that poorly (as he did the other day vs the Strangers) in a MLB game in a long, long, long time. And I'm a Rangers fan, so I know bad pitching!!!

No control and when he got them over they were watermelons. Wow! Again everybody has their bad days, but WOW!